


In the Back of My Mind, On the Tip of My Tongue

by littlemel



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: F/M, Gender or Sex Swap, Pregnancy Scares, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-28
Updated: 2010-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 05:34:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3238190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlemel/pseuds/littlemel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She hasn't had her period since right after Christmas. Valentine's Day is next week, and that's too many weeks in between, even for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Back of My Mind, On the Tip of My Tongue

**Author's Note:**

> Written mostly while high on cold meds. Title from "Many Shades of Black" by The Raconteurs. For [](http://pearl-o.livejournal.com/profile)[**pearl_o**](http://pearl-o.livejournal.com/) , whose predilection for badfic, uh, planted the seed for this, so to speak. With many thanks to [](http://modillian.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://modillian.livejournal.com/)**modillian** for all her help. Originally posted February 28, 2010.

She buys the test at a Duane Reade in the city, a few subway stops in the wrong direction from SVA. She's only got thirty bucks til payday on Friday, but she can ration her lattes and her smokes for the next day and a half--not that she should be smoking or drinking coffee right now. Probably. Maybe. Fuck. But that's what the test is for.

The cashier doesn't look at her as he hands over her change, and Gee stuffs it in her jacket pocket, crumpled and clinking as she mumbles a quick thanks and shoulders the door open, stepping out into the icy bite of the wind.

It's just starting to snow, just starting to get dark, and Gee squints up at the streetlight as she pauses to light a cigarette, blinking at the sparkly swirl drifting down, down, until she feels upside-down and dizzy.

Her stomach makes an unhappy, empty noise and she presses her hand to it, trying to remember the last time she put anything in it besides coffee and Diet Coke.

The bowl of Apple Jacks she had before class made a second appearance at Newark-Penn, and she's been too freaked out to eat since she counted back and realized she hasn't had her period since right after Christmas; Valentine's Day is next week, and that's too many weeks in between, even for her.

She checks her watch. It's later than she thought, but if she hurries she can catch the next train and be home in time for dinner. Instead she shoves the test deep into her messenger bag and heads for the glowing green of a distant Starbucks sign, her feet heavy, head bowed low against the cold. She'll start rationing tomorrow, and she can always bum cigarettes from Mom. She just can't bring herself to go home yet.

*

The house is dark when she trudges up the driveway, three coffee-and-cigarette-filled hours later. The snow's coming down in earnest now, covering the street and the sidewalk in an inch of grayish sludge that soaks right through her boots. Her toes are half-frozen, her fingers numb and clumsy around her key as she tries to slide it into the lock.

"Ma?" she calls as she shoves the door open, shaking the snow from her hair and stomping it from her boots. "Hello?"

No answer, and no rumble of the TV or stereo beneath her feet to let her know that Mikey's home, either. A rush of relief warms through her and she hates it, hates that she doesn't want to see him right now. Hates that she wouldn't know what to say if he was home, because he'd know that something was wrong. He'd just look at her and _know_ , and he wouldn't let her shrug it off and say "nothing," and right now, she hates that, too.

Like the curious twist in her belly, low and sharp like jealousy, because if Mikey's not here he's out with someone else and she _needs_ him. Because he'd make her blurt it out, that she's late and she's fucking terrified and _oh god, Mikey, what if_. He'd wait outside the bathroom door while she peed on a stick and hold her hand while they counted down the minutes, their eyes glued to the test strip. And then they'd figure out the rest, together.

But Mikey's not home, and Gee doesn't know where he is or when he'll be back. But it's okay, it's fine, if it means she can cling to her ignorance a little longer and hope that maybe, maybe her body clock's just fucked up and that the milk in her cereal this morning was starting to spoil or something.

Right.

She clomps wetly into the kitchen, blowing warm air into her cupped hands and flicks on the light switch with her elbow. There's a note on the kitchen table in her mom's loopy scrawl: _Out to dinner with the Salveri's. Mikey, your laundry's in the dryer. Gee, there's leftovers in the fridge. Love, Mom_

Gee tugs open the refrigerator door, grabs a Diet Coke and a triangle of aluminum foil that could only be a slice of pizza, and heads for the basement. It's small and dark and messy down there, ugly as sin and crammed full of mostly-forgotten crap, but it's the only place she's ever felt like she could breathe, in the dank and the dark. She turns the lock behind her and exhales shakily, her head tipped back against the closed door, her eyelids prickling.

*

She doesn't remember falling asleep, but she jolts awake to footsteps thundering down the stairs, the sallow glare of her bedside lamp, the white-noise hiss of her speakers. Disoriented and dry-mouthed, salt in her eyelashes. Her head hurts, her arm numb from where she's been sleeping on it. She rolls onto her back and stares at the water stains on the ceiling, listening to the basement door open and the clunking of Mikey's feet as he crosses to their room.

"Gee?" The bedroom door creaks open and Gee fights not to turn to the wall, petulant and angry at nothing, at everything. "You awake?"

Her shoulder twitches up. "Sort of."

"Then I'll try to be sort of quiet." Mikey smiles, and Gee turns on her side, facing his bed, to watch him take off his boots and shrug his jacket to the floor. Gee's still wearing her clothes from earlier, her skirt that's gone ratty at the hem and the sweater that was Mikey's until her boobs stretched it out and he didn't want it back anymore. Mikey hovers in the space between their beds, blocking the light.

"Move over," he says, a little slow, a little thick. Tired or tipsy or both, she can't tell.

Gee shifts back a few inches and closes her eyes, feels the mattress groan and dip when Mikey sits and the warm lankiness of him when he stretches out next to her, all limbs and sharp edges. He smells of beer and smoke and sweat; like familiar, late-night Mikey, but Gee can't relax all the way against him, purposely curls herself so her belly's not touching any part of him. She's never been very good at faking anything, especially indifference--especially with Mikey, who knows her too well for her own bullshit.

"What's wrong?" he asks, just like she knew he would.

She just buries her face in his shoulder, her fist clenching in his shirt. A quietly desperate cling, like so many other nights when she was too much in her own head to talk and Mikey didn't make her.

"Hey," he whispers, right up against her ear. She shivers and gathers his shirt up tighter, her lips parting against the worn cotton of his shirt. "You okay?"

The seemingly simple yes-or-no questions are so much harder to avoid, when she could just nod or shake her head. There's nothing simple about any of this.

She thinks about the test in her bag, unceremoniously dumped at the foot of her bed. She'll have the house to herself tomorrow morning, while Mikey's at Eyeball and Mom and Dad are at work; she could take it then, alone. Or she could wait until Mikey gets home, before she has to leave for her shift at the store. Her head's a mess of wanting him there with her but not wanting to tell him before she knows if there's anything to tell.

All she knows for sure is that she wants the rest of tonight to pretend as best she can that her whole fucking life might not come down to the color of a pee stick.

"I don't want to talk about it," she mumbles into his shoulder. That, at least, he usually lets her get away with. It's the truest thing she can tell him.

"M'kay," Mikey says, easy as anything. Like the way she tips her face up to the downward tilt of his chin; the way his hand settles on her thigh and hers settles on the ridge of his hipbone, just above the waist of his jeans. Like the way her fingers work over his belt buckle and the way his fingers slip over and then under her panties. Like the way she always touches his face and he never closes his eyes when he pushes into her, careful and careless.

*

Gee wakes up to a quiet room, blinking at Mikey's rumpled, empty bed. The slant of the single, dusty sunbeam tells her it's around nine. She doesn't have to leave for the store until two, to catch the 2:23 bus so she can stop at Dunkin Donuts and have a cup of coffee before her shift starts. Five hours, give or take, to work up the courage to piss on a stick.

The ceiling creaks over by the door. Someone's in the kitchen upstairs.

"Fuck," she mutters, sitting up and scrubbing her hands over her face. Whoever it is, she doesn't want to talk to them.

She tugs on her robe--ratty and pilling and two sizes too big, but too comfy to throw out--jams her smokes in the pocket and trudges upstairs, into the bright kitchen. Mikey's sitting at the table, his hair a mess of flattened knots and twisty spires, sawing off the edge of a waffle with his fork. He looks up at the sound of the door, smiles. Gee's pulse trips.

"I thought you were working today?" she asks, shuffling over to the coffeepot. Still a few cups left. She reaches into the cupboard for a mug.

"Alex said I could come in late as long as it's before noon and I bring pizza. So I figured a few extra hours of sleep was worth fifteen bucks. I mean. Right?"

Gee just shakes her head, smiling to herself as she reaches for the milk. Mikey waves frantically in her peripheral vision, his mouth full of waffle.

"Wait," he mumbles, and Gee pauses, milk in hand. "Check the expiration date on that?"

"Ohhh-kay," Gee says slowly. She finds the date stamp, smudgy purple ink under the spout. "It's tomorrow. Why?"

Mikey swallows. "I think it's going bad. I felt sick all yesterday morning after I had my cereal."

Gee doesn't even sniff the milk before she pours it down the kitchen sink, her chest tight, her breath quick.

"Gee, are you okay?" Mikey asks.

"Yeah, just-" She straightens up and chucks the empty milk carton in the trash. "Me too. I got sick at Newark-Penn yesterday. I thought I-" Almost, almost, but she catches herself, fumbles anxiously for the pack of Marlboros in her robe. She liberates a cigarette with her teeth, her thumb already flicking over her lighter. Her hands are shaking. "Yeah, it must've been the milk."

She'll take the test after Mikey leaves, and maybe, just fucking maybe, they can laugh about this later.

*

Mikey rushes past her an hour later in a flash of skinny limbs, a smear of toothpaste-minty lips across Gee's cheek. "Hey, I think there's a party tonight, if you wanna go?"

There's a party every night. It's just a question of how long it takes Mikey to hear about it.

She hasn't been to a party with Mikey since fall break. Somewhere up in Bergen County, couple of weeks before Halloween. Everyone kept thinking Gee was Mikey's girlfriend, and Gee and Mikey kept letting them think it.

It wasn't the first time. It wasn't like they'd never kissed, either--or that that was any huge secret, really. Shit, there was that one time with Gabe, when they were all way too high. And that other time, with Frank, when they were all a little too sober. But it'd never gone further than that, never more than just kissing and the "accidental" brush of Mikey's fingers over the side of Gee's breast. Nothing with like, intent or anything.

Maybe it was that the party was too far from home, that they were too many friends of friends of friends from the original invitation, and neither of them knew anybody--which pretty much never happened with Mikey. The thrill of anonymity or whatever, but a game of Spin the Bottle ended with them locking themselves in the laundry room, Gee pressed back against the dryer. Mikey's tongue in her ear and his hand wedged inside her jeans, and she tugged at his fly, at his lip with her teeth. She came panting against his mouth, clenching around his fingers; Mikey came with a stuttered moan, spurting across Gee's stomach, her t-shirt pushed up over her tits.

A week later they fucked in Gee's bed, Mikey pinning her to the mattress with his skinny hips. Quick and quiet in the early sunlight, while Mom got ready for work above their heads. Mikey came inside her accidentally-on-purpose, and it was more like nosediving off a cliff than going down a slippery slope.

A little push and then no ground under your feet, no going back. Nothing to do but fall, and hope you don't crash. She held onto him as tight as she could, wrapped her arms and her legs around him and kept him as close as she knew how.

"Gee?" Mikey touches her shoulder, keys in hand.

Gee realizes she spaced mid-conversation, that Mikey asked her a question she never answered. "Fuck, sorry. What?"

Mikey grabs his scarf off the back of the couch and winds it around his neck. He jerks his thumb over his shoulder. "I gotta go or I'm gonna miss the bus. Think about coming to the party tonight, okay?"

Gee nods sort of absently, still thinking about the feel of wet sheets under her ass and the ragged sound of Mikey's breathing next to her ear. The door thumps closed, and Gee tucks up into a little ball inside her bathrobe, wedged in the corner of the couch. She grabs the remote and turns on the TV.

Next time she looks at the clock she's got twenty minutes to get ready for work; it's so easy to tell herself that losing track of time was an accident. She's halfway to the store and more than halfway to convincing herself that it's better to take the test there anyway (there's no way Mom would ever find it) when she realizes she left it in her other bag.

Tonight, then. After work, while Mikey's at that party.

*

Mikey's waiting for her when she gets home, sitting on the floor between their beds, his jacket and shoes already on. "So you're coming to this party with me, right?"

Gee throws her jacket and her bag on her bed. "I don't know. I don't really feel like going out..."

"C'monnn." Mikey kicks at her foot and she glares down at him, not in the mood. "You haven't come out with me in forever."

"Yeah, I know, but-" Gee feels around for a decent excuse and only comes up with, "I've got class tomorrow."

Mikey snorts. "At _noon_."

"I'm tired," she tries, slumping dramatically to the floor next to him and resting her head on his shoulder. "The store was really busy tonight. I don't want to deal with any more people today." The last part's true, at least.

"Not tonight, honey, I have a headache?" Mikey teases. He nudges her with his elbow. "Gee?"

Gee makes a face. "I'm PMSing." She can only hope that's true.

"Then you should _definitely_ come out and get fucked up tonight," Mikey says, like it's the most obvious, most logical thing in the world. "Come on."

She could use a fucking drink or five, that's for damn sure. And she hasn't been out in a while--except for D&D, and she hasn't even gone to the last three games. That doesn't exactly count as going out, though. Still.

"Why do you want me there so bad?" she asks. It feels like more than just little-brother persistence, but she doesn't know anymore where the lines are, or if they're still there at all.

"Because it's more fun when you're there," Mikey says, and Gee's heart does that swooping, wrenching thing in her chest. Too heavy suddenly, like a boulder crammed behind her ribs. She can't tell if Mikey's fucking with her or not.

One more night won't make a difference, really. Just a handful of hours. It will all still be there in the morning, and as long as Gee hasn't taken the test yet, she doesn't have to take responsibility for her being irresponsible.

"Give me ten minutes."

Mikey nods, leans back against the dresser with a quiet, "'kay."

Gee feels Mikey's eyes follow her as she stands, warming across her shoulders when she pulls off her shirt.

*

Five beers later, Gee's sitting in Mikey's lap on the ugliest couch she's ever seen, in a too-small house in Kearny. They ran into Frank and Ray at the keg line, and the four of them grabbed the last little bit of space in the living room, by the window so Gee could smoke. Frank and Mikey are talking over Gee's head about some band Eyeball just signed; across from her, sitting cross-legged on the floor, Ray is telling her about his new D&D character.

"So hey," Frank says loudly, and they all turn to see him sliding a fat joint from his pack of Camels. "I'm gonna go for a walk. Anyone want to tag along?"

Ray gives a thumbs-up. "Fuck yeah."

"I'm in." Mikey pats Gee's thigh and she shifts off his lap. His fingers trail up her leg as he pushes to his feet and grins down at her, holding out his hand. "Gee?"

"Me too." She slides her palm into Mikey's, and he doesn't let go until they're all huddled behind the shed outside, passing the joint around. The wind rattles through the trees, slicing right through the worn-thin patches of Gee's jacket. She presses in closer against Mikey's side and takes the joint from his outstretched fingers. It's spit-damp at the end, but it smells good, sticky-thick and piney. She takes a hit, not as carefully as she should've, and starts to cough.

"Fuck," she wheezes, passing the joint off to Frank, who's laughing at her. "Fuck _you_ , Iero."

"Should've warned you about that, sorry," Frank croaks around a sucked-in lungful of smoke. "This is the shit I save up my lunch money for."

"I'm fine." Gee flaps her hands at her watering eyes, clears her throat and lights a cigarette. "I'm good."

Frank nods and takes another hit before handing the joint off to Ray. Gee feels light-headed and pleasantly off-balance and really wishes she could remember where she left her beer. She steals a sip of Mikey's instead, covering his hand around the cup with hers. Mikey grabs her wrist gently and turns it to take a drag of her cigarette, his lips warm against the pads of her fingers.

Later, at home, Mikey goes down on her. Leaves her jeans and her panties hanging around one ankle and brings her off twice with his tongue before she tugs him up by the hair. He nudges between her parted legs, feels her out with his fingers and then pushes in, sweet-slow. They both pause, panting and straining against each other; teasing and testing, still and always.

Gee nods and clutches at Mikey's hip, shifts so he slides in deeper. He shivers and she arches, doesn't even think about the maybe-baby until after Mikey slips out and rolls off of her, leaving a wet streak across her thigh. A pang of something, hot like guilt, spikes low in her gut. Gee folds in around it, slick thighs pressed together as she turns away from Mikey and prays it's just cramps.

*

Morning comes too soon, too bright. Gee's whole body feels like yesterday's punching bag, sore and bruised and stiff. Her head is throbbing, her stomach churning. She shouldn't have had that seventh beer. Fuck.

Gee sits up slowly, carefully. Mikey's snoring into his pillow, his feet sticking out from under the blankets. She doesn't remember driving home last night, or much of anything after they smoked that joint. She reaches for her cigarettes and the half-empty bottle of Diet Coke on her nightstand.

Mikey groans miserably when Gee pulls a plastic tub of pill bottles from under the bed and starts rooting around clumsily for the Advil.

"Can you not do that so loudly?" Mikey asks, low and gravelly.

"Can you not talk to me?" Gee snaps.

Mikey just turns to face the wall, and Gee shakes four Advil into her palm, swallows them with the last of her Diet Coke. There's no way she's making it to class today, but she might still be able to get to the store to pick up her paycheck, if she can sleep this thing off.

She stubs out her cigarette wearily and scrubs her beer-smelling hands over her face. Yesterday's make-up smears under her fingers and she wipes them on her blanket, tugging it over her head when she lies back down and closes her eyes.

*

The sun's already down by the time Gee gets up for good, after two more false tries and a round of puking that left her weak and wobbly-kneed. Mikey was already gone by then, his backpack missing from its spot at the end of his unmade bed.

It gets like this sometimes, too intense, and Mikey disappears for a few nights. Gee frets and worries and then pretends not to care when Mikey eventually stumbles in, usually shy a sock or a glove, smelling of other people's basements and all the different kinds of cigarettes he's bummed. He'll climb into her bed if she lets him--and she will, she always does--and make that sad-sorry sound in her ear, and they'll make their apologies.

But they could probably use a night or two apart. It's been a weird couple of days. It's not like Gee doesn't know it's her own fault, or that she really needs to just suck it up and go pee on the stupid test strip already. And she's gonna, after she showers and eats something. Maybe then she'll know what to say when Mikey finally comes home.

She falls asleep on the couch with the TV on and her hair wrapped in a towel, and sleeps through to the morning. Her alarm buzzes uselessly from the bedroom for an hour before she hears it, and _shitfuckdamn_ , now she's late for her shift. She gets ready in a frazzled rush and almost misses the bus when she has to double back for her wallet.

A pregnant woman waddles on the bus two stops later, her belly huge and round. Gee turns to the window so she won't stare, but she keeps catching the woman's reflection in the glass.

*

Mikey comes home later that night. Early, for him--it's not even eleven--and sooner than she expected. He walks past the couch without a word, goes into the bedroom and starts rummaging through his CDs, from the sound of it. She forces herself not to look up when she hears him walk back into the room, keeps her eyes focused purposefully on the TV.

"I needed to pick up some CDs," Mikey says tersely. "Frank and Hambone'll be back to get me in a minute. They just went to get gas."

Gee makes a noncommittal noise and Mikey reaches over the back of the touch to grab the remote out of her hand. He mutes the TV, crosses his arms over his chest.

"Okay. What's up with you lately?"

"What are you talking about?" Mikey never buys it when Gee tries to play dumb, but she keeps trying it anyway.

"You have been _weird_ the last couple days. And not Gee-weird. Like, _weird_ weird. So what's wrong/"

"I don't want to talk about it." Gee's palms are starting to sweat. She doesn’t want to do this. Fighting with Mikey makes her feel sick to her stomach, and she can't do this if she doesn't even know for sure if there's anything to fight over.

"Don't give me that," Mikey huffs.

"I don't have to tell you everything, you know!"

"Fine, just don't tell me it's PMS, because I know you, and that's bullshit. Something else's got your panties in a twist, so whatever it is, either spill or get over it."

She doesn't expect the rush of anger burning through her, or the razor edge to her voice when she blurts out, "I'm late."

And then it's done, it's out there and now they _both_ have to deal with it. She's shaking, sorry but not, terrified and sort of horribly relieved to have finally said it, to have made it half as real to Mikey in two words as it's been to her for two days.

Mikey's eyebrows twitch together before he drops his gaze to the floor, scratching tetchily at the back of his neck.

"Late," he says finally, his voice flat. "Like-" He gestures vaguely at her crotch. " _Late_ late?"

Gee can hardly even hear him for the blood thundering in her ears, but she nods. Her sinuses itch; her chest squeezes and she sniffles wetly, blinks her eyes against the burn of tears. "Yeah."

"Fuck." Mikey stumbles coltishly to the couch and slumps down on the arm. His shoulders curve down and in, his head low between them. "How late?"

"I don't know, a week?" Gee bites her lip, trembling under the catch of her teeth. "Maybe a few days more."

Mikey nods slowly at the carpet. "Did you get a test?"

"Yeah, I just... haven't taken it yet."

"Fuck, Gee, why not?"

"Because what if I'm fucking _pregnant_?" And now she's really crying, her face wet and hot, her breath coming in sloppy gulps for air.

"I... I don't know." Mikey slides down to the cushions, hunched in on himself. He looks up at her, wide-eyed. "I don't know."

Gee hasn't seen him look this scared since he got busted for bootlegging Disney movies. She squeezes her eyes shut and sits down next to him, close enough to touch if either of them moves just a little. They don't.

"Well, fuck, Mikey, I don't know either."

"But you gotta-" Mikey says dully, and shakes his head. He's staring at the floor again, his feet, his twisted-together hands. Gee watches the muscle in his jaw twitch. "You gotta take the test. So we, you know... _know_."

He's right. Gee knows he's right. The limbo of not-knowing, the _what if_ s crashing around and around in her head, makes it all so much worse. And now Mikey not-knows, too. That awful relief wells up again, horribly soothing. She nods and wipes her nose on the back of her hand.

"Yeah."

For a second there's nothing else to say. Then Mikey asks the million-dollar question, quiet and halting.

"What if- what if you _are_ , though? I mean-"

They both already know the answer to that; it's just that neither of them wants to say that they couldn't keep it. Not that she hasn't known all along that even if there's a pregnancy there would never be a baby, but. But.

A horn honks from the driveway.

"Saved by the bell," she smirks.

"Gee-"

"I'll take the test in the morning," she says, in lieu of a real answer. "The box says that's the best time to do it."

"I've got class at nine."

"Mine's at ten." Gee thumbs at the corner of her eye. It comes away streaked wet-black.

"So we'll both be up."

"Yeah."

"Okay." Mikey takes a deep breath and wipes his hands on his jeans. "Good. So, I'll see you later, okay?"

Hambone honks again, and Mikey lurches towards the door.

"Go," Gee says, "before Frank lets himself in."

"I'm going." Mikey leans over to kiss Gee's cheek and hand her back the remote. "Love you."

Sometimes it hurts to hear and sometimes it tears her open to say back, but she always does. Because she does, always.

*

Mikey's bed is still empty when Gee wakes up a little after three, wetness between her legs and a dull ache through her lower back. She pads to the bathroom for a tampon, too groggy-numb to figure out how she's supposed to feel.

He wakes her up when he gets home just before five, kneeling next to her bed and sticking his face in hers. "Hi, Gee. I went to a party and then the diner and I had a lot of coffee," he whispers, bright-eyed.

Gee backs away. "I got my period."

Mikey's grin falters, and Gee meets him halfway when he leans in again, resting his forehead against hers. "I'm... I don't know. Glad? I guess? Or... sorry? I don't know."

"Yeah, me either."

Mikey doesn't make to get in the bed with her, and she doesn't scoot over in invitation. He just sits back on his heels and puts his head down on her Star Wars blanket and closes his eyes. Like any of a thousand other nights when things have gotten away from them and they're struggling to find their footing again, unsure who's supposed to be apologizing, or why.

*

They don't talk about it again.

She loses track of the days, of how many slip past before she crawls into Mikey's bed in the middle of the night. Her period's come and gone--a little heavier than usual, she thinks, and it made her wonder. Just briefly, staring bleakly at the dark stain in her panties after she bled through another tampon, she wondered what the test would've said if she'd taken it. If there wasn't some self-sabotage in her procrastination. And then she cleaned herself up and forgot about it.

Mikey's still awake, she can tell by the deliberate slide of his fingers over her hip. But there's something cautious in his touch. Something hesitant and strange. She twists around to kiss him, biting and hard, pleading.

"Mikey..."

Her voice catches, raspy and wet. She wants to say too many other things, but none of them come out when she opens her mouth, because he's kissing her back, easing her back to the mattress with a gentle hand on her shoulder. He fits himself between her legs, braces himself on his elbow while he reaches for the nightstand drawer. Gee turns to see a flash of foil packets, torn open with Mikey's teeth.

It doesn't feel the same when he pushes in. He doesn't feel the same. The pause is longer, tense, when their hips meet. Too careful, too aware of the condom, making things feel not just different but _wrong_ , in a way they never did before. It takes them a while to find their rhythm, to hold onto it long enough to let go of it and lose it. They keep catching each other's eyes, but can't hold them for long.

And after, after Mikey's shuddered into her and she's averted her eyes while he pulled off the condom, Mikey presses along Gee's back, his cock soft and wet and strangely foreign against the back of her thigh. His breath tickles up the hair at the nape of her neck, and she still doesn't know what to say.

Everything's different, now. Different but still okay, wrong but still okay--for now. Gee closes her eyes and finds Mikey's hand, feels the ground shift beneath them when their fingers twine.


End file.
